Month: February 2013

Here’s a cool set of station jingles that I put into a montage. It was sent in on an unlabelled Maxell UR 60 cassette, with only one thing written on the case, “KRLA Jingles 1972”. The only other station that I remember ever having similar jingles was 1020 KDKA Pittsburgh. It might have been from whatever jingle company created these, or perhaps just something similar. These are very unique- some are long-form jingles lasting :30 seconds, some are short, and they include all different types of arrangements, from a church choir to Rock, Funk, Country & Western and even old Ragtime. I suppose, in theory, the station could play any kind of music and have a jingle that fit. Not having ever lived in California where I could pick up KRLA, I never heard the format in ’...

From a cassette labelled Midwest Aircheck MW# 122, Dan Shannon is on the old 102.7 WBMX Chicago. They call this 102-7 the NEW ‘BMX. This is Contemporary Urban, or whatever they were calling the format back then. Mixed in with a lot of crossover Top 40 hits, WBMX had a captive audience in the Dan Shannon show. I don’t know much more about either Dan Shannon or WBMX Chicago, other than the call letters were changed to WVAZ on 10/19/88. As of this writing the WBMX call letters reside in Boston at 104.1, the former frequency of WBCN. Prior to moving to that frequency in ’09, the call letters were in use at 98.5 having replaced the old WROR on 02/26/1991.

In making this presentation, it was difficult to combine brevity with a complete background picture of WOGY as it was in 2000 as compared with the station that followed it, WMBZ “The Buzz”, or even the next two stations that followed, Rhythmic WSNA “Snap 94.1!” and Classic Hits 94.1 WKQK. Forgetting for a moment that the origins of then WOGY go back to 1978, and on 94.3 FM, along with the guy who started the station, Sam Phillips, who got the call letters WLVS, specifically to honor Elvis Presley. With that out of the way, imagine yourself in Memphis Tennessee during one of their legendary June heat waves. It’s 95 in the shade, the Tunica Mississippi Casinos are advertising everywhere – TV, Billboards and Radio (you’ll hear a couple of promotions a...

Credit for this classic aircheck goes to several sources. Robyn Watts, who donated a number of East Coast Airchecks (in this case, ECA 41/San Francisco/San Jose) and California Aircheck. Somehow, there’s two ‘master’ copies floating around, and I don’t know which service was the one that got the original recording. An all-too-short aircheck from Bill Lee, and our favorite West Coast Top 40 station, KFRC! This one’s from 1981, and Lee is at his rhymin’ best. Welcome into the airchexx.com talkup university! Very few jocks have ever been able to talk up the intro of a record and hit the post every time – and there’s never been anyone who could make up a rhyme to just about anything and do it shotgun style over music like this guy. You rappers, y...

The station currently known as WXLO 104.5 FM is a Hot AC station which targets the greater metro area of Worcester, Mass, and to a lesser extent, the northern Worcester County communities of Fitchburg and Leominster. Its current signal is enormous, heard just outside of Boston, north into central New Hampshire and west as far as the Quabbin Reservoir. But, prior to 1984, both the station and its signal footprint were much smaller. From January, 1979 until April or May of 1984, the station then known as WFMP had its transmitter atop a hill in Fitchburg, Mass. The signal was beamed there via STL link from the studios located at 170 Prichard St., a road just behind the downtown business district in Fitchburg and as I remember it, right next to Fitchburg High School. The studio was housed in a...

Scoped down from a 45 minute cassette side where we even removed commercials (this is from the 90s after all), here’s just under 3 minutes of Kenny Walker on a Saturday in sunny Miami Florida. Y-100 was always a station that oozed excitement, and even in 1997, the station is hot! Somehow, the station sounds like any CHR station today, yet the difference is that there’s a LIVE JOCK in the studio on a weekend. The jingles would even fit today’s format. Its been 16 years, but it doesn’t seem all that long ago.

Contributor Mike Hotaling is the guest on the Scott Lonsberry show this particular day. As you’ll hear, Mike was also the host of a show called “Earth Speaks”, an environmental program aired on WQBK/WQBJ “The Edge”. At the time, Mike was also a Rock Jock on The Edge as well. As our Contributor describes this, Lonsberry and the rest of WQBK was a Right Wing talk station. Said Hotaling, “…it is indeed my very first of many many apperinces on the scott lonsberry show. you would figure a left wing environmentalist and a right wing conservative would be oil and water? the segments just kept getting better and I became a regular on his program. sort of on a local scale a Jon Stewart, Bill O’Rielly thing…. didnt agree on much of anything but y...

Here’s part of the Ron Chapman Morning Show on KVIL. Not much in the way of music here, but some beautiful jingles, lots of traffic reports and some news of the time. This is from before the station started calling itself “lite FM”. I’m impressed by the quality of Chapman’s show, and of the music segments heard (remember, all music is scoped), the variety of songs played. Many of these aren’t heard on the air anywhere today, thanks to ultra-tight over-tested music playlists, so enjoy this slice of North Texas radio KVIL from late Winter, 1988.

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